"I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don't let it bother me. I don't let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a sexual fantasy about being tied to a bed and ravished by a liberal." PJ O'Rourke, Give War a Chance

Thursday, December 03, 2015

Terrorist sympathisers

As far as David Cameron telling his MPs not to go through the voting lobbies alongside Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers goes, I prety much agree with Twll Dun here. It was unnecessary and counter-productive to the debate, because it gave everyone on the other side a semi-legitimate reason to feel aggrieved. On the other hand, my advice to Labour would be that if you don't want to be called terrorist sympathisers, you might want not to elect people to your leadership that quite clearly sympathise with terrorists.

How dare you call me a terrorist sympathiser?!

Equally, most of the frothing indignation has been bullshit. Cameron quite clearly did not say that all opponents to airstrikes on ISIS were terrorist sympathisers. Pretending that he did is just dishonest. Just as is the other meme that's starting to go around - that Cameron is himself a terrorist sympathiser because he hasn't declared war on Saudi Arabia. And just as is this cartoon in today's Times.

One of the entire points of the debate over Syria is that Assad has refused to take on ISIS - preferring to focus his energies on wiping out more secular internal opposition. The entry of Putin into the war, breathlessly celebrated by such "anti-war" voices as Patrick Cockburn in the Independent and gorgeous George Galloway, has unsurprisingly seen them line up behind their ally Assad, their actions again focused on non-ISIS opposition. Why else would Russia have been bombing along the Turkish border? The suggestion that bombing ISIS is somehow to act in Assad's and Russian interests is beyond fatuous - it is dishonest.

There are quite a few entirely legitimate arguments to be made against extending the RAF's mission in Iraq across the border to Syria. It's a shame that all the arguments people are actually making are such bullshit.